The Department of Homeland Security has a new big idea for improving the cybersecurity of federal agencies and key private industries: big data.

A White House progress report released Feb. 5 detailing how the federal government is seizing big data opportunities said DHS is “working across government and the private sector to identify and leverage the opportunities big data analytics presents to strengthen cybersecurity.”

When queried by Nextgov, a DHS spokesman declined to provide details about the big data efforts outlined in the report.

But in a conference call with members of the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee that same day, White House and DHS officials provided glimpses into a number of ongoing initiatives that aim to fuse traditional cyber-defense methods with the real-time intelligence rendered by robust data analytics.